Convergence: Superman: Man of Steel #1 (2015) Review

Adventures In Babysitting

Written By: Louise Simonson
Art By: June Brigman, Roy Richardson, John Rauch
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 15, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

We're in Metropolis, the dome is up.......... or down, however you might think about it, Superman is nowhere to be found, so that means this looks like a job for The Man of Steel.......... or just Steel but I've always liked calling him The Man of Steel especially during this timeline with this Pre-Zero Hour story.  So a little background.  After the death of Superman, John Henry Irons decided to put his mind and his body to the test of honoring Superman by building a mechanical suit and being the hero that Metropolis needed at the time and right now it seems that he was visiting Metropolis with his niece and nephew when the dome trapped everyone in Metropolis.............. Making him a super babysitter.  Let's see what happens a year later when Steel seems to be the only one with powers due to it stemming from his mechanical suit.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us getting the low down about how Steel's been running himself ragged stopping crime and saving people throughout the city and that his niece and nephew and him have been using Star Labs as their base of operations.  Not a lot of time for exposition though because it seems that some rogue Lexcorp renegades have gone out and started their own separate gangs and each are vying for territory in Suicide Slums and the fight crosses over into Star Labs, making our Man of Steel get back to work.  During the fight Bibbo's place......... The Ace of Clubs gets damaged and we see that during this year, where John Henry Irons taught his niece and nephew how to repair his suit, they took this knowledge and built their own suits and decide to............ Well, suit up and go and help Bibbo fight off looters.  

Steel finishes his fight and drives off the power suited Lexcorp renegades and before he can give Natasha and Jemahl a stern lecture about super suiting about, the dome falls away and we get the normal Telos ramblings about Converging and how he's been there for them and how they must now fight for their own survivor........... All this leads to Gen13 showing up immediately and kicking the shit out of Steel so that they can ascertain who else is a part of his team.......... You know since it would be silly to pit the entire Gen13 roster against one man.  Well, I guess silly is what we're going with here because as we all know, Steel is a one man wrecking crew........... or is he?  

In the end, while Natasha and Jemahl were watching Steel's battle, one of the people they fought off from looting Bibbo's place gets his powers back and we find out that it's Parasite and he sucks the life force out of Jemahl and then turns his attention to Gen13.......... It's just too bad that they didn't get distracted by the purple monster before they beat the ever loving hell out of John Henry Irons.  As the issue closes Natasha gets her Uncle John out of there and we find out that he's badly burned and even has his back broken.  Hopefully someone else comes and joins "Team Steel" because of right now it looks like bad times are ahead for the next issue.................. Or hopefully Parasite is considered a champion here because when we left him, he was absorbing the hell out of Gen13's powers.

That's it for this issue of Convergence: Superman: Man of Steel and while I would have liked a little more about how Steel's a bad ass taking care of business on his own, I found myself really liking the Natasha and Jemahl bits by the end and it's a good thing too because really this story is about them and their introduction into the super hero world.  Also, it was bad ass to see Parasite out and about because he is one of my personal favorite Superman villains and I don't think he gets adequate panel play in comics......... So that was a plus.  Really though this whole comic was a battle frenzy that pushed our hero to his limits and beyond and because of it, I can't wait to see where we go from here in the second issue.  While some might not be all about the art in this issue, I personally really liked it because it feels like the house style of DC during the 90's and it really feels suited here and works perfectly in telling this throwback style story............. The only real problem I have is because of my own personal neurotic need to have continuity because we saw in last week's Pre-Flashpoint stories that Roy Harper's cybernetic arm didn't work under the dome so I have an issue with Steel's suit working and some of the nanotechnology we were presented with in this story.......... Maybe the rules are different under different domes but I would have liked an explanation........... again this is just nitpicky nonsense that I'm going all Annie Wilkes over but it's still something that I would like to understand.

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue isn't the Steel spotlight that I was hoping for when going into this book, it does present Steel in an awesome way where he is the last line of defense against Metropolis falling into complete chaos since he's still out and about in a world where powers are gone and technology rules.  A lot of battles throughout but the thing that will make you come back next issue is the shocking cliffhanger that spells doom for the Pre-Zero Hour Metropolis........... Yeah, that's a little over the top but I know I'm looking forward to issue two.

7/10